


Run and Repeat

by Marcus_S_Lazarus



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Relationships suggested but nothing direct, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26846326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marcus_S_Lazarus/pseuds/Marcus_S_Lazarus
Summary: When Barry’s first accidental trip through time sends him back two years rather than one day, he takes a chance to avert a more devastating disaster… so long as he can get a certain archer to believe him.
Relationships: Barry Allen & Oliver Queen
Comments: 20
Kudos: 59





	1. One More Time

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter starts just as Barry is trying to stop the tsunami Mark Mardon was prepared to unleash on Central City in "Out of Time", but after that… well, it gets interesting.

As he ran along the coastline, Barry could only pray that this plan was going to work; he had come so far since he woke up from that coma months ago, but this was far and away the biggest thing he'd ever had to do.

The Undertaking in Starling City had been devastating enough even after the Hood/Arrow/Oliver had managed to stop one of those earthquake machine things that Merlyn was using; if a wave that big hit Central City… if all those people died because he wasn't fast enough… if it killed Iris after what she'd just told him…

He wouldn't let himself focus on what could happen; he _had_ to stop this.

As he ran back and forth along the coastline, heading from one end of the city to the other, moving so fast that he was amazed he wasn't seeing himself coming the other way as some kind of 'speed mirage', Barry couldn't believe that Mardon could be this fixated. He could just about understand the guy being angry about his brother's death, but summoning a wave that big when Iris had to be his primary target…

As he registered the updraft created by his speed force the worst of the water back, Barry just kept pushing himself harder and harder, faster and faster, fighting to keep the race going for as long as that wave threatened the city… Mardon had to give up _eventually_ ; there was no way it could be easy for him to maintain something that big for this length of time…

As Barry let out a defiant roar, he put on another new burst of speed, and suddenly felt as though he'd just run through something that had appeared in front of him. For a moment Barry just kept running, but then he realised that there was someone standing in his path. Barry quickly halted his forward momentum before he could fully acknowledge that something like that should be impossible, but then he felt something seem to shift over his body, and looked down to see…

Barry couldn't understand what he was looking at; his Flash suit was literally _fading away_ as he looked at himself, leaving him in casual clothing that was definitely _not_ the green shirt and dark trousers he'd been wearing when he'd accompanied Iris to the coastline.

The unexplained wardrobe change would have been bizarre enough on its own, but when he turned his attention to his surroundings, Barry was left feeling even more confused when he realised that he was standing in the living room of the apartment he'd owned before the particle accelerator explosion. Joe had sold this flat and put most of his stuff in storage when Barry was being treated at S.T.A.R. Labs, and the place he'd found when he woke up had been a fairly basic residence before he had to move in with Joe because the new building wasn't private enough to hide his activities as the Flash…

"What the Hell?" Barry said, looking at the apartment in confusion before heading for a window. It had been a while since he'd even bothered looking up his old neighbourhood, but even if the new resident might have decorated this apartment the same way he had by sheer coincidence, he definitely remembered that the building opposite had suffered damage in the particle accelerator explosion… and now it looked fine?

"Oh God," he said, suddenly remembering everything he'd discussed with Professor Stein just last week. Pulling his phone out of his pocket- an older model he'd lost in the explosion- Barry pulled up the calendar and stared at the date in shock.

 _12 February 2013_.

 _Two years in the past_ , Barry thought, staring numbly at the phone. _Oh my God_ …

His immediate thought was to run to S.T.A.R. Labs for help, but he quickly stopped that train of thought. He trusted Caitlin, Cisco and Doctor Wells, but right now none of them even knew who he was, and he suddenly had all kinds of dark thoughts running through his mind about what could happen if he told them about the future. Professor Stein's theory about time-travel at least assured him that what had just happened to him was theoretically possible, but he'd spent the last few nights catching up on all kinds of time-travel films and TV shows that might give him some ideas about how that would work, and he'd seen enough to know that doing that might be a risk.

Barry hated even the idea of being so selfish that he'd let the particle accelerator explosion happen just to make sure he still became the Flash, but if he stopped it under these circumstances he suddenly had this horrible image of being caught in some kind of warped grandfather paradox-style time loop where he stopped the explosion, couldn't go back to stop it without his powers, got his powers and went back to stop it, had no way to stop it so it ended up happening, and so on and so on…

"No," he told himself solemnly; as much as he hated the idea, doing anything that could directly interfere with his own life as the Flash was too great a risk. Saving his mother should be safe enough if/when he got the chance to do that, as he couldn't see his parents moving away from Central City and his family's friendship with the Wests should still leave him with an interest in solving crimes even if he wouldn't have his more personal motives. Still, even if he couldn't do anything about the biggest event in his life right now, there had to be something he could-

 _The Undertaking_.

As soon as the idea came to him, Barry didn't know why he hadn't thought of it the moment he realised time travel was possible.

He wasn't sure about trying to go back again to save his mother from the Reverse Flash right now, but if he was already _here_ … with a couple of months to go until everything went down with Malcolm Merlyn's plans…

He recognised that Oliver had done the best he could to stop the devastation of the Glades in his first year, but the loss of those lives still weighed heavily on his friend; if Barry could somehow find a way to help him, he had to at least try.

* * *

Miles away, the man known to the public as Harrison Wells watched in confusion as one of the video monitors in his private lab displayed Barry Allen vanish from his apartment in a burst of crackling energy.  
  
"How did _that_ happen…?" the temporally-displaced scientist mused to himself. "And more importantly, where did Mr Allen go…?"


	2. The Hood and the Hero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: Timeline-wise, this starts in the last couple of minutes of "Betrayal" in the first season of the show, as Oliver and Diggle were talking in the Arrowcave, but things will _swiftly_ diverge from that…
> 
> 2: Apologies for the exposition, but I think we can all agree that Barry can't exactly visit Oliver when the man's still calling himself 'the Hood' with no prior experience with metahumans and expect a warm welcome right off the bat, so there was some important ground to cover before they can get down to business.

Listening to his mother's voice talking about 'the usual threats' and something about the _Queen's Gambit_ as he sat in his base, Oliver still wasn't sure how to process any of this.

"It's definitely her voice, Diggle," he conceded to his friend. "I just… I can't believe it's her."

"We all have blind spots when it comes to family," his bodyguard/friend observed.

"Yeah," Oliver said bitterly. "Laurel's almost got her killed tonight. Vanch never would have known about her connection to me if Lance hadn't lied to her."

"I guess the lesson here is blind trust can be dangerous."

Oliver chose not to respond to that, and instead played the tape again; he wasn't sure what he was expecting to gain from a repeat, but it was as though he had to be sure…

" _I made it clear to him persuasively that his plans endangered the undertaking_ ," his mother's voice said once again. " _I didn't have to make the usual threats_."

"What's the Undertaking?" Diggle said as Oliver turned off the recorder while that unidentified male voice said 'Excellent'.

"I don't know," Oliver replied. "But with all this talk about threats-"

"Whoa!" an unfamiliar voice said. Spinning around, Oliver was shocked to find a stranger standing nonchalantly in the middle of the lair, actually grinning at his surroundings before he looked at the two men. "Seriously, you used to have it like this? I knew you started out-"

Oliver lunged towards the man, aiming to grab him in a chokehold, but the man dodged him with a speed that Oliver hadn't seen in any of the people who'd trained him over the last five years.

"Right, you don't know me yet," the man said, looking at Oliver with a nonchalant grin that only made Oliver more concerned. "Look, Oliver-"

"How did you find this place?" Oliver glared at the young man, already contemplating the best way to get his hands on a weapon.

"Because I was brought here next year to save your life."

"You were- next _year_?" Diggle looked at the man in confusion. "What the Hell are you-?"

"OK, like I said, you don't know me yet, so let's take this from the top," the young man said, still grinning around at Oliver and Diggle as if they were old friends. "My name's Barry Allen; I'll be the Flash in a couple of years."

"The Flash?" Oliver looked the man over with a sceptical expression. "Shouldn't you have a longer coat?"

"A long- OK, I have to admit, I never heard _that_ one before," the man who was apparently Barry Allen replied with a chuckle. "But seriously-"

There was a sudden flare of wind and lightning, and suddenly Oliver and Diggle were holding bottles of beer in their hands, the young man standing in front of them with his arms folded and a serious expression on his face.

"I thought you'd appreciate something to drink once you've heard what I'm about to tell you," the young man said solemnly.

"Which is?" Oliver asked, taking care to conceal his fear. Whoever and whatever this man was, whatever he was been capable of, he hadn't done anything to hurt Oliver or Diggle yet, so the best move would be to play along with whatever he had to tell them until Oliver could act.

"In a few months' time, Malcolm Merlyn is going to destroy the Glades as part of the Undertaking."

Oliver was prepared for many things, but hearing the term he'd only just learned about associated with a man he'd never even considered as a suspect to anything wrong with the city was such a shock that he almost dropped the bottle he was holding.

"Malcolm Merlyn?" Diggle said, voicing their shared incredulity at that news. "How do you… and what's with-?"

"Long story short, you'll meet me for the first time next year," Allen explained with a nonchalant smile, as though this whole story wasn't the most insane thing Oliver had ever heard. "I helped you all track down this superstrong guy using this drug- I think you called it Mirakuru-"

" _Mirakuru_?" Oliver repeated, putting the beer down and moving to grab Allen's arms, only for the young man to once again demonstrate a disturbing amount of speed as he sidestepped Oliver's attack and held up his hands.

"OK, I know you told me to be alert, but there's a difference between being alert and being _paranoid_ , you know?" Allen said, still grinning at him even if his expression had shifted to reassuring rather than casual. "I'm not here to hurt you, Oliver; I'm trying to warn you-"

"About something that you say is only going to happen months in the future?"

"And what the hell is 'mirakuru'?" Diggle asked, his gaze shifting from Allen to Oliver. "And how do you know about it?"

"…It was some kind of super-soldier drug the Japanese were working on during the Second World War," Oliver said, deciding that he might as well satisfy Diggle's curiosity since Allen was still looking at him in a disturbingly nonchalant manner but showed no apparent interest in harming either of them yet. "There were stocks of it on a marooned ship I found on the island; I had to stop a scientist from finding a way to recreate it and sell it on to the highest bidder…"

He pushed back those dark memories of how he had lost Slade and Sara and looked resolutely at Allen. "But how do _you_ know about it?"

"Like I told you, a guy shows up in this city using that drug next year and I helped you analyse it-"

"And why would we just… let you do that?" Diggle asked, looking at Allen in honest confusion. "Seriously, what's with all this crap about time travel?"

"OK, this is where it gets complicated-"

"Because it wasn't already?" Oliver countered in exasperation.

"My mom was murdered when I was eight years old."

That was enough for even Oliver to fall silent, looking at their visitor with a new sense of regret. Losing his father when the _Gambit_ sank had been hard enough, but he'd been an adult; the idea that this young man had suffered such a loss at such a young age…

"I'm sorry," Diggle said, looking sympathetically at Allen. "Who did it?"

"Everyone thought that my dad did it, but it was actually… well, it was another speedster," Allen continued.

"Another?" Oliver repeated, mind scrambling to get this situation straight. "There's someone _else_ like you out there?"

"And a couple of months ago- from my perspective, anyway- that other speedster showed up in my town and nearly beat me to death," Allen explained. "My team and I have since worked out… well, we found evidence that suggests that when my mom was killed, I was there as well, in the sense that I'm going to go back to that night at some point in my future and try to stop it."

"Hold on; you're suggesting that this other speedster went back in time to… kill your mom?" Diggle held up a hand in confusion. "And you followed him to stop it and just… missed?"

"Like I said, the part involving my future hasn't happened to me yet, so I don't know what happened _exactly_ -"

"And you still haven't explained how any of this is possible," Oliver put in. "Where did _you_ get these… powers… of yours?"

"Basically, in about a year's time, an accident will happen that resulted in me being struck by lightning and exposed to various chemicals and other-dimensional energies that gave me superspeed and created a whole wave of other metahumans in the process."

"…Metahumans?" Oliver and Diggle repeated, after a glance at each other confirmed neither of them understood what they'd just been told.

"Humans with various unusual powers; we've encountered an… interesting range of abilities so far," Allen said, before he shook his head. "What's important right now is that in my time, which is two years from now, I was trying to stop a tidal wave from hitting Central City by basically running back and forth along the coastline to create a wall of wind to cancel it out before it hit. I'm not sure if it would have worked, but somehow, when I pushed myself that fast, I ended up… well, I ran back through time and ended up here."

"You… ran back through time," Diggle repeated, wishing he'd drunk enough beer that he didn't have to think about just how crazy his world was becoming. "That's a thing now?"

"I spoke with a physicist who speculated that it could be possible for me to move so fast that I could generate enough kinetic energy to… basically, I made a hole in the space-time continuum and ran to another period of history."

"OK…" Oliver nodded, before he decided to just accept that and move on. "You did that and then decided to just drop into my lair because we allegedly know each other in the future?"  
  
"Like I said, I met you in the future shortly before I even got my powers, and I came here to warn you about the Undertaking."  
  
"Which involves Malcolm Merlyn?" Oliver said, making his scepticism clear as he looked at Allen. "Why would he be part of all of this?"  
  
"Because he's… I think I was told you call him 'the Dark Archer'?"  
  
The only reason Oliver didn't drop his beer at that statement was his training having helped him to prepare for almost anything.  
  
The notion that Malcolm Merlyn was even _capable_ of being as dangerous as the Dark Archer… he knew that Tommy and his father had some problems, but there was a difference between having problems and being capable of fighting on that level…  
  
"And what _is_ the 'Undertaking'?" Diggle added, once again beating Oliver to the bigger question he should be asking right now.  
  
"Basically he's been working with your mom and a bunch of other people over the last few years with the goal of destroying the Glades with a couple of earthquake machines."  
  
Oliver could only stare in silence at that revelation, struck by the notion that he had just been told this many impossible things in such short notice.  
  
He'd experienced some strange encounters during his five years away, but the notion that Malcolm Merlyn was capable of… that there was even such a thing as…  
  
And the idea that his mother _was_ a part of all this… he'd had some concerns about Diggle's discoveries, but he'd been telling himself that she was just going along with it all to keep Thea safe; the idea that she was capable of just agreeing to something that terrible…  
  
"I need to think," he said, putting down the beer and heading for the door, pausing only to look back at Allen with his hardest possible glare. "Don't leave Diggle's side."  
  
"Where else am I going to go right now?" Allen called after him as Oliver walked up the stairs and left the lair. Relieved that Tommy had already left for the night, Oliver grabbed his civilian helmet, got on his motorbike, and tore off into the night, knowing even as he set off that he would never be able to 'outrace' the dark thoughts buzzing through his mind.  
  
As much as he wanted to dismiss Barry Allen as some nutcase, the mere fact that he knew about mirakuru meant that Oliver couldn't just disbelieve everything he was telling them… but what did that mean for everything Allen had revealed about his mother and Malcolm's apparent plans?


	3. Reflecting on the Future

"Fascinating," Thawne mused to himself as he studied the scanner he had reverse-engineered from Gideon's stolen systems. He had taken readings based on the cameras he'd set up in Barry Allen's apartment, but when faced with something as unexpected as Barry manifesting his speed at least a year before he was ready to activate the particle accelerator, a hands-on approach was definitely required.

He didn't know how this had happened, but somehow Barry Allen had gained his speed before the particle accelerator explosion, and judging by the surge of tachyons that still filled this apartment, he was prepared to guess that time travel was involved. Based on the fact that he was still here, Thawne was willing to guess that whatever had happened had nothing to do with him directly, but that just left him with the baffling question of what _had_ happened.

Fortunately, at this stage of operations the particle accelerator project could be left to essentially manage itself for a few days so long as he could provide a suitable excuse for his absence. Ramon, Raymond and Rathaway may not have the expertise of the engineers of his home era, but they were exceptionally skilled by the standards of their time; if they couldn't keep up the pace without him to supervise them for a few days then he'd wasted a lot of time and effort in recruiting them.

As for his own projects, Thawne was pleased to confirm that his theory had been correct. While the brief burst of speed Allen had displayed in this apartment wouldn't have been enough his purposes under normal circumstances, the tachyons infused with the Speed Force energies was enough to give them a very significant boost.

So long as he could confirm where Allen was and what he was up to at the moment, he might be able to use the residual energy here to at least temporarily restart his own connection to the Speed Force. He would still need to trigger the particle accelerator explosion to make the restoration permanent, but once he had enough speed to confront Allen on a reasonably even footing, Thawne could find out what had happened to his future foe and work out what his next move should be…

As he raced through the streets of Starling City, a helmet his only true disguise from the public, Oliver wondered why he was taking such an insane story seriously.

His encounter with that strange idol back on Lian Yu was enough to assure him that there was more to the world than the traditional and eccentric criminals he'd encountered since he returned to Starling City, but magic could at least be explained as something people had studied for years. The idea that Allen was telling the truth about what he was capable of…

If he believed that young man, in just over a year, the world would be faced with a significant upheaval of everything they knew about science and the world they were living in. When Oliver came home, he had thought that he could just deal with his father's assigned mission using the skills he'd learned while away. The idea that there might be more threats out there than just corrupt officials and well-armed criminals…

Oliver brought the bike to a halt when he found himself on a bridge over the road, allowing him to look over the city as he thought.

Even as a part of him tried to remember that he had no reason to trust Allen's words, at the same time there was no reason for that young man to have told such an outrageous lie if he _wasn't_ telling the truth. Allen had already demonstrated the scale of his speed; if their strange visitor had actually _wanted_ to hurt him and Diggle, Oliver had to concede that it would have been easy enough for Allen to take him apart if their visitor had been there to hurt them.

Besides, as much as Oliver didn't like to consider the possibility that his mother could be involved in something like what Allen was implying, it fit in with everything he and Diggle had found so far. His father had to have known _something_ about whatever was going on in Starling to have acquired the list in the first place, so his mother basically inheriting his father's place in whatever conspiracy had put it together made a twisted sense.

How she and Malcolm Merlyn had come up with the idea of the Glades with something as audacious as an earthquake machine was another matter, but he couldn't ignore the fact that he'd already had suspicions about his mother's motives. He could tell himself that she'd only done any of this because her partner- he wasn't ready to think of Malcolm Merlyn as being that ruthless- had probably threatened Thea to ensure her cooperation, but there were only so many atrocities a person could justify before an excuse like that stopped being enough.

Oliver still wasn't sure if he was ready to believe Barry Allen's full story, but with everything he'd said, on top of his mother's earlier comment about the dangers of asking questions, there were enough anomalies in this situation that Oliver knew he needed to find out more about what his new associate had to tell them.

Diggle wasn't sure if Allen was telling the truth or if it he was a really weird nutcase (something about the guy made Diggle discount the idea that he was just lying to them), but either way the man at least didn't seem to be particularly dangerous even if his story was implausible. After Oliver had walked out of the lair, Diggle had eventually decided that the best way to deal with this situation was to treat Allen as a friend until he had a better reason to think otherwise. With that in mind, he had taken Allen up to the bar to get him another drink, only to raise his eyebrows at Allen's exaggerated depression as he placed the bottle in his hands.

"What?" the bodyguard asked.

"Just… annoying side-effect of my speed," Allen explained with a wistful smile as he studied the glass in his hand. "My metabolism's so fast that I literally can't get drunk."

"You can't?"

"I basically recover from it too fast for the alcohol to have any effect on me," Allen affirmed. "Caitlin and Cisco were able to create a drink that could at least give me a brief buzz, but when I say 'brief' I mean that it only lasted for a minute at most."

"Caitlin and Cisco?"

"My… my team in the future," Allen explained, looking up with a wistful sigh. "Caitlin's a doctor and Cisco's an engineer; we've pulled off a few interesting breakthroughs since I started working as the Flash…"

"You got your own team?"

"Yeah," Allen nodded, before he smiled at Diggle. "It's… well, I don't want to say too much, but they've been helpful. I do the fieldwork and actually _fight_ the metas, but Caitlin helps me work out how their abilities work, Cisco helps me create devices that can negate their powers if I can't just overwhelm them with my speed, and we're led by an older scientist who helps us pool it all together…"

"And now you're worried you'll lose that?" Diggle asked. "By changing things?"

"I don't know how this will affect my own history, but… well, when I realised where I was, how could I call myself a hero if I let the Undertaking happen?" the young man said, his expression more grim than anything Diggle had seen from their strange new ally. "Oliver suggested that it's like the lightning _chose_ me to be something better than he was; I can't live up to that kind of faith if I let this happen, no matter what it might cost me."

"Oliver said that?" Diggle looked at the young man with a smile. "And you really were struck by lightning?"

"And a bunch of chemicals and the energy of the particle accelerator explosion, but yeah."

"Huh," Diggle mused. "Y'know, I had a cousin who was hit by lightning once; he just developed-"

"A stutter," Allen finished, smiling at Diggle as he finished the sentence. "Yeah, I know; you said the same thing a few months ago."

"Which is… what, a year and a half in the future for me?"

"Pretty much."

"And here I was thinking working for a modern-day Robin Hood would be the weirdest thing I'd ever find in my life," Diggle shook his head, smiling slightly at the incredulity of this situation before he looked at Barry with new curiosity. "So… what do you know about this 'Undertaking'?"

"It's complicated and I'd prefer to tell you and Oliver at once, because I'd like to deal with all your questions in one go."

"Fair enough," Diggle acknowledged. He was about to say something more when the door to the club opened and Tommy Merlyn walked in, looking at Diggle and Allen in surprise.

"Uh… Mr Diggle?" the younger Merlyn said, looking at the two in surprise. "What are you doing here… and who's that?"

"Barry Allen," Allen said, looking at Merlyn with a quizzical expression that set off a few warning bells in Diggle's mind; if this young man was a friend of Oliver's in the future, why wouldn't he already know who Tommy Merlyn was? "I'm-"

"Barry's the nephew of an old army buddy of mine," Diggle explained, hoping that his impulsive lie would pass muster. "He just stopped by town on personal business; I offered to put him up for his time in Starling."

"And… you're talking about stuff here?" Tommy looked at them, clearly seeing the holes in the story. "At this time of night?"

"My train was delayed, so I got here later than Digg expected," Allen smiled (Diggle just stopped himself starting at hearing his nickname from someone he'd just met; Allen was likely used to referring to his future self that way). "It's a bit late for me to just check into a hotel, so we're… working out my plans while I'm here."

"And you had to do that here?"

"I was dealing with some things downstairs and thought they'd find it easier to talk things out up here," Oliver's voice cut in. Looking over, Diggle smiled in relief as he saw his friend walk into the club from the lower level, still wearing the same casual clothing he'd left the base in earlier. "Sorry if they disturbed you."

"Disturbed me?" Tommy smiled in a manner that made it clear to Diggle he was trying to seem more in-control than he was. "Nah, it's all fine; just surprised to see a new face here at this time of night."

"Sorry to bother you," Allen smiled apologetically at her. "So… sorry, don't take this the wrong way, but who are you?"

"Tommy Merlyn; manager and co-owner," Tommy nodded at the time-traveller with a curious gaze. "Oliver never mentioned me?"

"I'm just here visiting Digg; who owns this place… well, it hasn't really come up," Allen shrugged. "Don't take it personally, OK?"

"Sure," Tommy said, nodding at Allen with a suspicious expression for a moment before he turned away. "Just need to check my office; I think I left some paperwork here."

"Let me know if you need anything," Oliver smiled at his friend. "Mr Diggle and I will sort something out for Mr Allen; any hotels particularly changed over the last few years that I should know about?"

As the two old friends spoke about some of their past experiences in the city's hotels, Diggle wondered if he should be concerned about the way Allen kept looking at Merlyn as though he wasn't sure what to say to the man.

He didn't think it was anything bad, but there was definitely something about Tommy Merlyn that was putting Barry Allen on edge…


	4. The Interrogation of Moira Queen

"So," Barry looked tentatively at Oliver as they stood in the base once again, "you believe me?"

"I'm… willing to consider it, anyway," Oliver nodded at Barry, trying to hide the uncertain expression on his face. "But if this is going to… I need to be _sure_ …"

"I get it," Barry nodded at his future vigilante mentor in understanding. "Believe me, I spent years basically chasing the idea of the impossible and it still took me a while to consider time travel as a serious explanation for what happened to my dad…"

His voice trailed off and he glanced at his watch. "Damnit…"

"Problem?" Diggle asked.

"Just that I need to remember to call Joe tomorrow to tell him I'll be off tomorrow."

"Joe?" Oliver asked.

"Joe West," Barry answered with a brief smile. "He's basically been my foster dad since my mom died and dad was sent to prison, but he's also one of my supervisors at the Central City police department."

"You're a cop?" Diggle raised a surprised eyebrow.

"Crime scene analyst, actually," Barry clarified with a smile. "Actually, that's how I met you next year; I read reports about the guy with mirakuru and dropped by claiming that I was a head CSI tracking a similar case back home."

"Claiming?" Oliver repeated.

"I was actually just an assistant running my own investigation; like I said, I was interested in the weird stuff, so I often did my own work to chase up any other leads I found on anything that was just… out of the ordinary, even if it wasn't specifically my case."

"Going around the rules to do what you had to do," Diggle nodded at Barry. "I like that."

"All right," Oliver said, looking between the two men. "I take it we've got time before this 'Undertaking' happens?"

"It's at least a couple of months from now when it all goes down."

"Then right now we could probably all do with a bit of a rest before we start planning our next move," Oliver responded, before he indicated the room around them. "This isn't much, but it's got a bed of sorts that we've used to treat my injuries, and I think we can all agree that bringing you to stay with me or Digg isn't entirely practical…"

"No, that'll work," Barry smiled in understanding as he looked at the stretcher in the base. "Besides, all being well, I'm only going to be here for a little while; I can put up with an uncomfortable bed for that long."

As Oliver and Diggle exchanged glances, Barry didn't need his future experience with them to know what they were thinking; how likely was it that things were going to be that simple?

Still… if he could just remember enough of the key points, that had to be enough, right? OK, so he'd forgotten that Tommy Merlyn had been an old friend of the Queens and one of the victims of the original Undertaking, but it wasn't like he'd ever had any reason to pay attention to photos of that guy. Before the Undertaking Tommy Merlyn was just some rich guy's son in another city who never did anything really bad enough to make Barry pay attention to any news about him, and afterwards people weren't exactly going to draw more attention to one particular victim when it was clear he'd had nothing to do with his father's plans for the city.

Seeing the guy upstairs had been a bit unexpected, but it just reinforced the importance of what Barry was trying to do; Oliver wasn't going to lose a good friend if Barry could do anything to stop it.

 _I just need to be sure I know what I can tell them_.

* * *

"Yeah, so I'm not going to be in for the next few days," Barry said, hoping that his vibrating vocal chords were helping to sell the idea of him being ill. "Caught some kind of bug since last night; it's nothing serious, but it's probably best I don't infect anyone else."  
  
" _You're sure you'll be OK_?" Joe asked at the other end of the line. " _I could send Iris_ -"  
  
"Just need a little time to rest; I'll be fine," Barry said as urgently as he could while feigning sickness. "I'll let you know if anything changes, but I'm pretty sure I just feel like crap right now."  
  
"… _All right_ ," Joe said, his voice showing concern but no sign of suspicion. " _Just me know if you need anything, OK_?"  
  
"I will," Barry confirmed, before he hung up the phone and turned back to Oliver and Diggle. "OK, that's me sorted for the next few days."  
  
"And he'll just buy that?" Diggle asked.  
  
"The advantage of being basically the good kid since I was twelve," Barry shrugged. "Once I… stopped trying to break into the prison to see my dad… I've generally been pretty good about things like school and work, such as saving my days off for private research; he wouldn't think that I'd deliberately ditch my job."  
  
"OK, I can get that, but you're sure that you'll be OK staying off work?" Diggle asked. "I mean, if you're in the past… and I can't believe I have to think about crap like that-"  
  
"Don't worry about it," Barry smiled. "I gave it some thought while I was on the way here; I'm still officially just the CSI assistant at this point, so there's a bit of leeway in how seriously they take me in the first place, and if I remember everything correctly, the next few days are fairly straightforward cases."  
  
"You remember cases from over two years ago?" Oliver asked.  
  
"I had a pretty big moment last December- _your_ last December, to be clear- when I proved that another cop was trying to plant evidence to get the conviction he wanted last month; the next few cases stuck out because I didn't want to just end up riding on the high of that victory," Barry clarified, before he looked more awkwardly at the other two men. "But on the topic of memory… you have to realise that I don't completely _know_ what caused the Undertaking."  
  
"I thought you said it was earthquake machines?" Diggle asked.  
  
"Yeah, but there were… I mean, you've got to realise that Malcolm can't just stick something like those anywhere in the city and expect them to go off and destroy everything, right?"  
  
"In other words, he needs to set them off in a specific location and you don't know where that is?" Oliver concluded, looking pointedly at Barry.  
  
"Or where they were made," Barry added awkwardly. "I mean, I did read over the news about the event when it happened, but you've got to keep in mind that I didn't _plan_ to come back like this; I didn't do any exact research on where the machines were made or where they were set off because I didn't think I'd need to know any of that…"  
  
"OK, fair enough," Oliver held up a hand to stop Barry's apology. "So what do you suggest we do to get more information?"  
  
"Well…" Barry began, looking tentatively at the two men before his gaze settled on Oliver, "I _do_ know that the machines were built by your parents' company… so there might be a way we could get more information…"

* * *

Walking back into the mansion, Oliver still found it hard to accept that things had come to this point so quickly.  
  
He'd only been thinking about 'visiting' his mother as the Hood to make her talk, but if Barry Allen was right, he had to do everything he could to get confirmation of her role in this mess, which meant that he had to be sure he was provoking all her buttons to learn everything she knew.  
  
He couldn't believe that he was showing this much faith in Barry Allen's words when he'd barely even known the man for a day, but there was something in the young man's manner that would have made Oliver at least _want_ to believe him even if Allen hadn't demonstrated his speed to support his story.  
  
"Hey, Mom," he said, walking into the lounge to find her standing thoughtfully by a window.  
  
"Oliver?" she looked at him curiously. "What is it?"  
  
"I was just… that book of Dad's got me thinking," Oliver said. "If that book I showed you was about some of Dad's old secrets… maybe something about that book prompted Walter's kidnapping-"  
  
"It's safest to leave things alone," Moira said firmly.  
  
"Even when some of the names on there have already been targeted?"  
  
"Targeted?" his mother looked at him in surprise. "By who?"  
  
"By the Hood."  
  
"The Hood?" Moira repeated, with a sense of disbelief that Oliver could have almost accepted if he wasn't already suspicious of her. "You can't seriously believe that-"  
  
"I'm asking you for the truth," Oliver looked pleadingly at her. "I'm not saying that you had bad reasons for doing it, but you can't just keep acting like I'm still some kid who needs to be protected from the consequences of your own mistakes. Maybe you were scared, and I don't think you meant for any of this to happen, but you've been struggling with something since Walter went missing-"  
  
"You need to stop asking these things," Moira said, walking up to stand directly in front of him. "Do you understand? I need you to stop."  
  
"I can't," Oliver said, privately exasperated at her attitude; even if he hadn't been the Hood, the way she was acting like he was still a child she had to protect was frankly offensive at best. "I need to know."  
  
Moira's hesitation was enough time for the room to go black.  
  
"Is that a power outage?" Oliver asked, playing along with the current scheme with only slight surprise; Barry had said he'd be watching, but it was still unexpected to realise just how fast the speedster could trip the fuses when he wasn't sure if Barry had ever been in this house before (even if he appreciated that the man could have visited the property in the future).  
  
"I don't know," Moira began, before glass broke and Oliver felt something himself being pulled away; he could just hear his mother calling out before he heard the slight 'phuft' of a dart being fired, followed by him coming to a halt in the main hall with Allen standing alongside him.  
  
"You're sure-?" he began.  
  
"Digg confirmed that the tranquiliser he's using will just disorientate your mom; she'll assume me grabbing you like that was just a hallucination," the speedster nodded. "You're sure about this?"  
  
"It's the only way to be sure," Oliver said solemnly.  
  
He didn't voice his darker thoughts; if this turned out to be an elaborate lie after all, he and Allen were going to have _words_ …

* * *

Tied down in a metal chair in an abandoned warehouse; Oliver wondered how this kind of cliché had so easily become a part of his life. It wasn't exactly hard to find a suitable location, considering the unemployment problems out in the Glades, but it was almost embarrassing that this was the best situation he could come up with to question his mother.  
  
Finally, his mother regained consciousness, looking anxiously around herself to confirm their location; empty wooden boxes, a large illuminated light hanging in front of her, and Oliver on the other side of the room, tied up in the same manner.  
  
"Mom!" Oliver yelled, faking fear as he realised that she was awake.  
  
"Oliver," Moira shook her head. "Are you OK? Oliver, what- we have to get out of here."  
  
"Moira Queen!" Diggle said, appearing in the traditional Hood costume, the shadows just enough to stop anyone noticing the differences as he stood alongside Oliver's chair. "You have failed this city!"  
  
It was the first time Oliver had heard that line from the other side, and he was relieved to find that it was suitably intimidating even if he knew he had nothing to fear from the other party.  
  
"Do not hurt my son," his mother said desperately.  
  
"Tell me what the Undertaking is and I won't have to," Diggle said as he turned to stand in front of Oliver. For a moment Oliver just stared up at his friend, Diggle's face just visible under the hood to assure Oliver of his reluctance to do this, but a slight nod from Oliver confirmed that Diggle should start the plan, punching Oliver in the face.  
  
"No!" Moira said desperately.  
  
"Tell me!" Diggle said as he hit Oliver again.  
  
"Please!" his mother called. "Leave my son alone!"  
  
"What is Malcolm Merlyn planning?"  
  
"I can't tell you!" Moira said (Oliver briefly noted that at least her lack of confusion when Merlyn's name came up confirmed that Allen had been right about the 'who', even if they still needed evidence of everything else). "He'll kill me, he'll kill my family-!"  
  
"You should be more worried about what I'll do," Diggle said, before launching another punch that knocked Oliver's chair to the side.  
  
"No!" his mother yelled out again. "Malcolm is planning to level the Glades!"  
  
The confirmation was more shocking than almost any blow Oliver had taken since he was first trapped on the island. He'd still hoped that Allen might be wrong about something, but hearing that revelant…  
  
"He said so he could rebuild it, but…" his mother explained, trailing off and making it clear that she didn't have anything more to tell.  
  
"How?" Diggle turned back to look at her.  
  
"There's a device-"  
  
"What device?"  
  
"He said that it can cause an earthquake-"  
  
"How is this possible?"  
  
"I don't know," Moira shook her head, her voice trembling as she looked at Oliver; it was almost a relief that he didn't have to act at the horror he was feeling upon hearing confirmation of everything Allen had told him so far. "It was invented by Unidac Industries. Malcolm used my company's Applied Sciences to turn it into a weapon."  
  
"Why would you get involved in something like this?" Diggle asked; at least his friend knew what questions Oliver would want answered in this situation.  
  
"My husband… he got involved without my knowing," Moira explained shakily.  
  
"He was just trying to do some good. He was lost… His decisions left me vulnerable to Malcolm, and I had no choice; I had to protect my family and my children."  
  
"This device," Diggle asked, now standing in the middle of the two chairs. "Where is it?"  
  
"I don't know," Moira replied.  
  
"If you don't tell me, I can't stop Merlyn."  
  
"Oh, you can't stop him," Moira said, shaking her head tearfully. "It's too late."  
  
Diggle stood in silence for a moment, and then he turned back towards Oliver's chair and pulled out a knife.  
  
"No, no, no, I told you everything!" his mother yelled as Diggle crouched down. "Oliver! No!"  
  
She fell silent when Diggle stood up and revealed that he had just cut Oliver's bonds. Walking back over to Moira, Diggle cut her ropes as well before he walked out of the warehouse as Moira ran to look at her fallen son.  
  
"Oh, sweet-" she began, as Oliver coughed and got to his feet; even holding back enough to do nothing more than bruise, Diggle still packed a punch.  
  
"Please," his mother looked desperately at him. "I know what you must be thinking, sweetheart, but I never intended any of this to happen. You know I would never willingly be a part of anything like this."  
  
"I don't know anything any more," Oliver said, his tone cold as he staggered towards the warehouse exit, leaving Moira Queen sobbing on the floor behind him. Whatever he had just learned here, he knew that he had to get away from his mother before he did something that he might regret later. He already had a few ideas about how he was going to follow up on the leads this interrogation had given him now that they'd verified some of Allen's future knowledge, but right now he had a more immediate priority.  
  
He'd spent the last few months trying to keep his family safe by keeping his activities secret, but if his mother had taught him anything right now, it was that keeping secrets from family would just put more people in danger, which meant that he was going to get Thea to safety _right now_.


	5. The Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter, but as things start to change more from canon, I didn't want to stick too many big moments in one chapter, particularly with my current plans…

Thea was surprised to find that she was actually starting to enjoy her time working at CNRI. The job itself was fairly straightforward, and she appreciated that she was just playing a relatively small part in the bigger picture, but it was actually kind of nice to feel that she was doing something more than just having a good time for a change.

Plus, seeing some of the people coming in and out of CNRI looking for help…

Thea didn't think she'd exactly been selfish or elitist about the people who lived in this part of the city, but it was still different to see the people of the Glades up-close like this. Some of the current news reports on the area might portray it as basically being a hotbed of criminals, but looking at it from the perspective of CNRI, it was easier to see that the place had just gotten a bad reputation because of a few bad apples. Some of the people who came here asking for help seemed like they'd just been pushed to their limit, only breaking a few small laws such as stealing food because they felt like they had to, rather than because they wanted to…

Her reflection and self-analysis was cut short when she came out of CNRI to find Oliver already waiting for her on a motorbike, passing her a helmet and slipping down the visor on his own with a grim expression behind the eyes.

"Get on and hold tight," he said firmly. "I'll explain when we get there."

Thea liked to think that she would have protested about this treatment earlier, but right now the relative intensity of her brother's gaze made it clear that he wasn't interested in talking right now. Putting the offered helmet on, Thea got on behind her brother and wrapped her arms around his waist, tightening her grip as the motorbike picked up speed. She tried to keep an eye on the streets they were passing through, but she soon lost track of exactly where they were going; it was as though Oliver was deliberately trying to make it hard for anyone to work out where he was going, like he expected someone to be following them or something…

"We're here."

"Your club?" Thea looked at her brother in surprise as he got off the bike. "What are you- what _happened_ to you?"

"That… relates to why you're here," Oliver explained, dismissing the distinct bruises on his face as he walked into the club and headed for the mysterious back door behind the bar. "Once you're in here, I'll explain everything."

"OK, that's not foreboding at all," Thea said, chuckling to exaggerate her growing apprehension as Oliver tapped numbers into the keypad beside the door. "So what's this… all… about…?"

Her voice trailed off as she started to walk down the stairs and saw the green arrows laid out in the racks on the walls.

"Yeah," an unfamiliar voice said suddenly, a light-hearted edge to the speaker's manner that seemed at odds with Thea's current surroundings. "It can be a bit of a shock when it all hits you the first time."

"Who the-?" Thea looked around the room in shock before her gaze settled on a young man wearing a casual shirt and light-coloured trousers, an eager grin on his face as he stood in a corner.

"Barry Allen," the young man said as he walked over to shake Thea's hand as she reached the bottom of the stairs. "Uh… nice to meet you, I guess."

"You 'guess'?" John Diggle's voice said, walking over to look at Barry Allen in surprise. "You didn't know her already?"

"Things were… complicated whenever I was in town before; I knew _of_ her, but we never really spent time talking-"

"Would you stop talking about me as though I can't speak for myself?" Thea cut in, falling back on indignation at being ignored to avoid thinking about her shock at the idea that Oliver was the _freaking Hood_! "I think _I_ can tell you if I met this guy instead of you needing to ask him-"

"Except I would have only met you next year."

"…Huh?" Thea looked at the young man in confusion, indignation replaced by confusion.

"Barry's basically from the future," Oliver's bodyguard explained with an edge of incredulity to his voice as though he couldn't believe he was saying that himself. "It's a long story, but he'll meet us next year when he comes here on a case, acquires superspeed in some kind of freak accident shortly afterwards, and the year after that he ended up running back in time to… well, now."

"…Right," Thea looked at the stranger, trying to decide how to react before concluding Oliver wouldn't have brought her here if he didn't trust this guy as well. "So… what are you doing here?"

"Stopping Malcolm Merlyn from using an earthquake machine to destroy the Glades in a couple of months."

Thea had clearly only _thought_ she was completely confused the moment 'time travel' became a serious topic of discussion.

"I… Tommy's _dad_ has an earthquake machine?"

"And Mom helped him put it together," Oliver cut in, his expression grim as he walked down the stairs to join the others.

"She _what_?" Thea stared at her brother in horror. "How- why-?"

"Before Dad… he gave me a book containing a list of names of people who had wronged this city," Oliver explained, his manner particularly solemn.

"Before he died?" Thea looked at her brother in surprise. "I thought he drowned when the ship-?"

"He made it off the _Gambit_ with me," Oliver cut her off solemnly. "We were on a lifeboat together… there wasn't enough food and water for both of us…"

"Oh God…" Thea whispered, suddenly realising what he was saying even as she tried to stop her mind picturing it in detail. "You mean Dad…"

"He killed himself," Oliver nodded. "To save my life… and so I could get back to the city and right his wrongs."

"And… that ties into Tommy's dad?" Thea asked, trying not to think about what Oliver must have been through; the idea of Dad drowning had been bad enough, but the idea that Oliver had to _see_ him die like that…

"From what Barry's told us, he was basically the person who wrote the list Dad gave me," Oliver explained. "He and a few other people were using it to blackmail key figures in the city a few years ago…"

"And now Mr Merlyn's going to destroy the Glades?" Thea looked from her brother to the mysterious Barry in shock. "You're from the future, so… you've already lived through this, right? How does the earthquake thing work?"

"Well… I didn't exactly keep up-to-date with the whole thing when I was reading about it after everything happened, but… the news said that Merlyn was planning to rebuild the Glades after he'd destroyed them with this earthquake machine, but he had to abandon that part of the plan after Oliver exposed his role in everything."

"OK, so what are you doing here?" Thea asked, trying to latch on to something she could question since the whole time-travel angle was something everyone else just seemed to accept. "I mean, if Oliver stopped this in your time- and _God_ , that's weird-"

"According to Barry, I only exposed the plan; I didn't stop it," Oliver corrected grimly. "If we don't stop it this time around, that machine will kill over five hundred people when it's activated."

Thea wished that she could find somewhere to sit down after that latest revelation.

She just kept getting hit with shock after shock in the last few minutes, and she had a feeling that the hits weren't going to stop any time soon.

"How…?" she said hesitantly. "How can we stop it?"

"We're working on that," Oliver said solemnly. "I already confirmed everything Barry told me by talking with Mom-"

" _Mom_ did that to you?" Thea looked at Oliver's bruised face with new incredulity.

"Actually, that was me," Mr Diggle raised his hand.

"Digg was dressed as the Hood and acted like he was using Oliver to make your mom talk," Barry explained with a shrug as Thea looked at him in shock. "Hey, it was his idea!"

"Which is why you're here," Oliver explained as Thea turned to look at her. "You can keep up your community service at CNRI, but until we've resolved this one way or the other…"

"You think _Mom_ would-?"

"She wouldn't hurt you, but I'd rather be sure she's not going to try and run away and make things worse," Oliver clarified, looking apologetically at her. "I just… I wanted to be sure you were safe before I made my next move."

"Which is?"

* * *

"Markov?" Felicity Smoak looked at Oliver in surprise. "Where did you find out about that?"  
  
"Basically… from Walter," Oliver said, hoping he wasn't crossing a line by doing that particular lie. Barry had assured him that Walter would be found alive even if he didn't know exactly where his stepfather was now, so he would at least make a credible source so long as only the right people outside of him, Diggle and Thea were told where he got this information.  
  
"Walter?" Felicity looked at him with new intensity. "He's alive?"  
  
"I don't know that for a fact, but I was checking over his papers at home and found a couple of references to it," Oliver explained. "I can't say for a fact that it's anything the company's been working on, but if you could run a check…?"  
  
"On it," Felicity nodded, as she turned her attention to the computer screen in front of her and began to pull up a few other databases. Oliver stood and waited for a few moments, hoping that Barry had remembered whatever he'd read in the future correctly about where that device had been built or what it was called.  
  
 _If he's wrong about any of this…_  
  
The young man hadn't been wrong so far, but this was far from a normal situation; if Barry Allen had remembered even _one_ detail wrong right now…  
  
"Here we are," Felicity said, looking up at him with a questioning expression. "There's nothing here about what the Markov Device is actually for, but it's being worked on at Unidac Industries, which is some kind of subsidiary that Walter apparently purchased last year."  
  
"Do they have any information about how it's coming along?"  
  
"There's some stuff about how they're still waiting on a few components, but again, nothing here to indicate what they're for or what this thing's meant to be used for…"  
  
"Don't worry about it," Oliver nodded reassuringly at her. "That's enough to give me something to go on right now; just… don't keep digging into that any further."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"I'd… prefer to be sure what the device does before we do anything impulsive," Oliver explained, crossing his fingers as he hoped the IT girl wouldn't question this too much. "If this did have anything to do with Walter's abduction, it wouldn't do to tip anyone off before we're sure what we're dealing with."  
  
"…Fair enough," Felicity nodded tentatively. "Just… let me know when you know anything else, OK?"  
  
"I will," Oliver nodded.  
  
That at least confirmed another detail Barry had shared with him so far, but he still didn't know where that second device the time-traveller had mentioned was at the moment…  
  
 _And I still need to have a 'talk' with Ken Williams tonight_.  
  
He appreciated that the List was small-scale compared to the devastation Barry had told him about, but Williams' victims still deserved justice. He couldn't do anything to affect Malcolm Merlyn's plan right now, but he could at least show that the Hood was still operating as normal, which meant going after his next potential target…


	6. Catching the Dodger

Sitting in the middle of the lair, Barry supposed he should have expected something like this to happen. Oliver telling Thea about the situation had been unexpected, as he wasn't entirely sure if Oliver's sister even knew everything about his life in Barry's time, but he supposed there were worse changes he could make to history than assuring a girl that her big brother was a hero.

Unfortunately, right now he was basically in a state where he didn't have anything else he could obviously _do_ right now. Oliver and Thea might have basically moved into this lair to get away from Moira, but they were still getting on their daily lives for the most part, taking advantage of the fact that Moira wouldn't come down to the Glades herself and Oliver could plausibly let Diggle take his calls without tipping anyone off that something strange was going on.

Thea had kept up her community service with Diggle driving her to and from the club, and Laurel Lance had apparently accepted the explanation that the Queens were dealing with difficult personal matters. Oliver was working on finding planning details of the building that currently housed the Markov device before any of them made a direct move against the earthquake machine to give them a chance to find the second machine before Malcolm could deploy either of them, but until then, there was nothing they could do about Merlyn's plans but wait.

Barry had thought about asking if Felicity could help them, but he'd constantly stopped himself from actually asking the question out loud. From what he'd picked up during his brief talks with Felicity about Team Arrow's past during her first visit to Central City, it had taken Oliver a bit of time to feel comfortable bringing her officially into the team, and Barry wasn't sure what the consequences would be on the team dynamic if he _suggested_ Oliver bring someone into the group rather than letting Oliver make the call himself.

Besides…

It wasn't that Barry didn't _trust_ Felicity, but after what he'd heard about how she basically ordered the team to stand down after Oliver was missing presumed dead over Christmas, he had some doubts about her commitment to their mission. He appreciated that she'd shut the team down because she was concerned for Diggle and Arsenal's safety now that Oliver was apparently dead, but in Barry's view that basically amounted to Felicity deciding that she knew best, even when both men were the ones who chose to go out in the field, fully aware of the risks they might be facing and willing to take them anyway. If Oliver chose to bring her into the team in this time, Barry wouldn't object, but he wasn't about to deliberately seek her out either.

Barry had decided to try and use the current free time to recreate the mask he'd made Oliver in the future, but it had been surprisingly tricky to find that compressible fabric; he was just going to put that down to the lair at the moment not having the same resources it would have by this time next year. At the same time, as much as he appreciated getting back to his scientist roots on one level, on a practical sense it was hard for him to just sit still when he knew he had the ability to help out more directly. He appreciated that Oliver didn't want to risk himself becoming reliant on Barry's own abilities to deal with comparatively simpler problems, such as the archer's current plan to visit this 'Ken Williams' guy about the money he'd stolen through some pyramid scheme, but Barry wanted to feel like he was _doing_ something…

His eyes fell on the date in the corner of the lair's computer screen, and Barry's eyes widened as he suddenly realised why that date had stuck out in his mind the first time around; at the time that he'd been captured, the Dodger had been the biggest crook the Hood had taken down.

OK, so the guy wasn't a large-scale threat like some of the people Oliver would face later, but he was a man with a not-inconsiderable body-count and reputation that he'd formed completely outside of Starling City, and he was going to be in the city…

The more he thought about, the more Barry found his mind racing over everything he'd managed to acquire from the official police reports on the Dodger's crimes after the man's arrest. Obviously intercepting the guy during one of his heists would be too risky in terms of exposing his presence here, particularly when the accelerator hadn't even been turned on yet but if he could just remember the relevant details…

"Derenick," he said, clicking his fingers as the name of the Dodger's first victim in Star City came to him. From what Barry remembered of the file, the man had been a fence that the Dodger had tried to use to sell his latest acquisition, but something had gone wrong and Derenick had ended up dead, and the two men he'd apparently hired to try and help him double-cross the Dodger had been left unconscious.

Oliver might not have Felicity on the team yet (Barry hoped he hadn't done anything to screw up that particular meeting), but the archer at least had the computer he'd been using to keep track of where his latest targets lived. Heading over to the computer, Barry tapped out Oliver's password- it hadn't been hard to watch Oliver enter it while he was moving at superspeed so the archer didn't realise he'd been watching- and ran a quick search to find the man's address. Having identified the man's living and work address, Barry checked Oliver's available equipment, and had soon pocketed a few zip-ties and other bonds that might be useful later.

The basic essentials gathered, Barry ran for the identified address, and wasn't entirely surprised to find the small art gallery where the Dodger would claim his first victims. Glancing inside the window as he ran past it at superspeed, Barry noted four men already inside the gallery; two bald men, one noticeably more heavy-set than the others, and a dark-haired man in suits standing on either side of a slightly overweight man with a thick beard wearing a blue bow tie, facing another man wearing a long grey coat over a three-piece suit.

Pulling out the small recording device he'd taken from one of Oliver's arrows, Barry put it in place near one of the gallery windows and then moved to a point where he could watch through the window until the time was right for him to move in. He could already see a large ruby in a suitcase on a table behind the man in the long coat, who had turned to address the bearded man as Barry returned to normal speed.

"I maintain a Swiss account for financial transactions," the man in the coat explained as he took out a piece of paper and handed it to the bearded man. "Here's the number."

Thanks," the bearded man said as he looked at the card. "I'll wire you the money. Assuming I don't misplace the numbers."

He tossed the card off to the side with a cool chuckle that was obvious to Barry even when he was looking at the man's back. "My bookkeeping method is a little sloppy."

"Really?" the man Barry was certain was the Dodger said with a cool smile, even as the bearded man's three bodyguards pointed guns directly at his head. "Clearly you're under the impression that you can have the Sherwood Ruby for a steal."

"Well, you're new here in town," the bearded man said. "We're not as refined in Starling City."

"I'm getting that impression," the Dodger replied, before he forced one of the guns up and pulled a small rod out of his jacket. Barry shifted his senses back to superspeed, but moved back to normality when he remembered that the other three men would come through this encounter alive, simply watching as the Dodger took them all down with a speed that even impressed the fastest man alive.

"Don't worry," the Dodger said, now pointing one of the guns at the bearded man Barry could now be certain was Derenick. "Your men are merely unconscious. In about seventeen minutes, they'll wake up with the ability to tell every other fence in this town that I'm not to be trifled with."

"W-what about me?" Derenick asked, his hands raised as he looked anxiously at the Dodger.

"I don't know," the Dodger replied, before he pulled the trigger.

As soon as he saw the man's finger start to move, Barry moved back into superspeed, grabbing the gun out of the Dodger's hand and the bullet out of the air. Recalling a nerve strike technique Oliver had taught him that he didn't often get a chance to use, Barry struck down both men before he returned to normal speed, allowing himself a smile as he watched them both fall to the ground, unconscious rather than dead.

He was fully aware that the Flash was 'needed' to fight metahuman criminals as his primary focus, but sometimes it was nice to be able to deal with the simpler opponents, particularly when these people didn't even know metahumans were a possibility yet. Quickly using the zip-ties to tie up the mens' arms before they could wake up, Barry then ran each of them to an alley off to the side of the Starling City Police Department (after confirming that nobody was in position to actually see him arrive) and then tied their zip-ties to each other, a phone with the recording on it pinned to the Dodger's shirt along with a note clarifying who these men were and what evidence the recording would provide.

He appreciated that it probably wasn't the way Oliver would handle things, particularly at this point in his career, but it was the best way he could think of to get those men off the street before anyone else died…

 _Hey… how did I know to look for that guy_?

Barry remembered to keep running until he'd returned to the lair to ponder that particular question, but he couldn't shake the sudden question that had begun nagging in the back of his mind. He knew that the Dodger _would_ have killed Derenick and his men if Barry hadn't stepped in before anyone could do anything fatal, and he knew that Oliver would have caught the man in a couple of days, but how had he known where to intercept the Dodger and Derenick at that point?

 _And how did I know those bodyguards wouldn't get killed by that taser_?

* * *

Back in Central City, the man wearing the face of Doctor Harrison Wells stared at the screen in thoughtful surprise.  
  
One advantage of possessing a computer system at least a decade or so in advance of what was available to the general public was that firewalls were basically non-existent to Gideon, so it had been simple enough to set up remote links to the camera networks in other cities.  
  
Granted, he had expected that Barry would have gone to Gotham rather than Starling, but it was possible that his own interference with the timeline had led to a few more changes than he was expecting regarding which of his fellow heroes the Flash would first make contact with…  
  
Still, the questions about the situation didn't matter so long as he was the only one who understood the situation. The flash of lightning that Gideon had detected was distinctly the Speed Force energy generated by the Flash as he ran, but it wasn't obvious enough for anyone else to pick up on unless they knew what they were looking for, and nobody in this time even knew that metahumans were a possibility in anything outside comics at this point.  
  
He just needed a few more days to ensure that his equipment could properly channel the dregs of Speed Force energy he'd picked up from Allen's flat, and then he could focus on finding out exactly what had happened to put Allen in contact with the Speed Force so early…


	7. Confrontation in Merlyn Manor

"You caught some thief?" Oliver looked at Barry in surprise.

"Well, I remembered where he was going to be from the police files that were sent out about it after the event," Barry explained with a shrug. "I've got a good memory for this kind of thing; once I realised the date, I decided it was worth a shot to take him down."

"So in the future, you knew about some jewel thief but didn't know that…" Thea trailed off, her expression going from hostile to embarrassed as she held a hand over her mouth. "OK, now that I'm saying it, that's just a completely dick thing to complain about someone not knowing; sorry about that."

"What?" Oliver looked sharply at his sister.

"Just… had a close call with some purse thief; it's not important," Thea shrugged before she looked at Barry. "What matters right now is that you got the guy, right?"

"And before he managed to kill anyone… well, here, anyway," Barry said awkwardly. "I mean, you'd have caught him on your own in the original timeline even without me being here, but I just figured… I mean, you had that Ken Williams guy to intimidate, I knew how it would all play out, so I just stopped him a bit ahead of schedule."

"Can't complain about that," Diggle shrugged. "We're dealing with so much we _don't_ know for certain, if you can knock a few small fry out of the picture in the process I'm all for that."

"I still can't quite…" Thea shook her head as she stared around the lair before her gaze settled on Barry. "You're _sure_ that Mom-?"

"I'm sure," Barry nodded grimly. "Trust me, the subsequent investigation was… pretty thorough."

"When you still don't know-"

"Barry explained that, Thea," Oliver looked at his sister with a mix of impatience and indulgence. "He didn't come back here on purpose, so he'd only paid attention to what the news had to report about what's going to happen up to a point, which includes not knowing where these devices were planted."

"But you're sure that you got the names right?" Thea asked.

"Trust me, the fact that these things were called the Markov Device is one detail I'm _not_ going to forget," Barry affirmed. "Seriously, even after both of them were dismantled and destroyed, I heard some rumours that the government was drawing up the necessary paperwork to classify those things as a new WMD to make it a literal war crime if someone ever tried to use new versions of them later."

"…Yeah, that's frankly terrifying," Diggle said grimly before he looked directly at Barry. "You're sure that there were two of these things?"

"Oh, the news reports made a _very_ big deal about that," the future speedster nodded at him.

"And those files Felicity found only gave you one address?"

"And even that new address may not be relevant for much longer, which is why we have to act on that now," Oliver said as he looked firmly at his official bodyguard. "I appreciate that you're not… comfortable going out in the field on your own-"

"With these stakes, we don't exactly have the time to do things a more practical way," Diggle nodded in understanding. "I've got a helmet and a bulletproof vest sorted out for the raid; it's basic, but it should be enough to get the job done."

"We'll make it work," Barry nodded at Diggle before he looked back at Oliver. "You're sure this is the best way to do it?"

"Everything you've told me about Malcolm Merlyn has been backed up by the evidence we've found so far," Oliver nodded solemnly at the speedster. "If we're going to find the other device, he's the only one who might know where it is, and we have to be sure that it won't get deployed even if we take him out of the equation."

"…Right," Barry nodded as he looked at the archer, a new sense of apprehension briefly crossing his face before he returned to a more neutral expression. "Do we have somewhere safe to do this?"

"Actually, I was thinking the safest place would be somewhere close to his home," Oliver observed. "If we can reinforce just how much we know, Merlyn might be more inclined to talk…"

* * *

Checking his suit in the mirror, Malcolm Merlyn wondered if he was overdoing it.  
  
On the one hand, he always prided himself on making a good impression, but on the other hand, Tommy had seen him in basically every kind of outfit he owned at some point or another. If he was trying to show that he was serious about wanting to make up with his son, it only made sense to look like he'd put some effort into the meeting rather than just dropping everything on him at once like he had during that last dinner.  
  
It wasn't as though he could risk telling Tommy the reason why he was closing Rebecca's clinic, but so long as they presented a united front-  
  
The fact that what happened next caught him off-guard for the first time since he began his training was almost as disorientating as what actually happened. He knew that there had been _some_ kind of transition between the two moments, but as far as he could tell he had gone from standing in his bedroom to sitting on a chair in his garage, facing the dark-clad form of the Hood and another man wearing some kind of red ski mask over his head.  
  
"Malcolm Merlyn," the Hood said, pointing an arrow at his head, "you have failed this city."  
  
"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about-" Malcolm began with his arms raised, trying to insert the right element of panic into his voice.  
  
"Then you're going to claim that you don't know anything about the Markov Device?" the red-masked man, his voice unusually deep.  
  
"What?" Malcolm looked at the other man in confusion.  
  
"We know _everything_ , Merlyn," the Hood said with a cold edge to his voice. "We know about the Markov Devices, we know about your plan to destroy the Glades, we know about your list, and we know about your enforcer; all we need from _you_ is the location of the device that's not in Unidac."  
  
"I repeat, I honestly don't know what you're talking-" Malcolm began, only to be cut short when the Hood's arrow leapt from his bow to go straight through his left forearm just as he was about to lower it. Malcolm had enough time to see the arrow coming, but suppressed the instinct out of a desire to try and reinforce the idea that he didn't know what these men were talking about, only to regret that thought when the arrow went straight through his forearm.  
  
Malcolm didn't even have to exaggerate the pain he felt at the wound; he'd grown so used to bluffing his way through any potential fight that he'd almost forgotten what it felt like to actually _be_ in pain. Despite his best efforts, Malcolm was forced to his knees as the Hood and his partner stood over him, only dimly registering that the two men standing above her were arguing.  
  
"…don't have time!" the Hood yelled.  
  
"There are lines we can't cross-!" the other man yelled, sounding like he had just stopped himself from saying a specific name. "You have to be better-!"  
  
"I didn't set out to be an inspiration to anyone-!"  
  
"You are to me," the man in red said, sounding surprisingly calm for a man who was working alongside the Hood. "I recognise that there are things you have to do to deal with what you're up against, but there have to be lines you won't cross."  
  
"I don't always have that luxury-"  
  
"But you need to recognise that you've got greater responsibilities now than you had in the past," the man in red said, looking more controlled as he looked at the Hood. "I know you-"  
  
" _And I know about_ _ **you**_."  
  
For a moment Malcolm thought that the man in the red mask had put on a more exaggerated false voice for some reason, but then he registered the surprised expression on what he could see of the other men's faces. He was about to glance around himself, but when a burst of what looked like lightning suddenly struck the man in the red mask and he suddenly vanished from view, Malcolm seized his chance.  
  
With the Hood clearly caught off-guard by this turn of events, Malcolm abandoned his fragile plan of feigning ignorance as he leapt out of the chair and grabbed for the other man's bow. Unfortunately, he underestimated the handicap of his injured arm, as the Hood easily parried the attack and struck Malcolm in the side of the head before he could take the weapon.  
  
" _Not_ happening," the man in the hood said firmly, before he sharply grabbed the arrow still in Malcolm's forearm and yanked it out. "I came here for the location of the Markov devices, and-"  
  
"Dad?" another voice said.  
  
When Malcolm turned to see Tommy standing at the internal door leading back into the house, he felt a surge of panic. Whatever his relationship was with Tommy at this point, he wasn't going to let his son get attacked by-  
  
As he found himself lying on the floor, he felt a brief surge of panic when he saw the Hood running for Tommy, but fear shifted to confusion when the vigilante just shoved Tommy aside and ran back into the house, followed by the sound of breaking glass as though he'd jumped through a window.  
  
Even as Tommy came over to anxiously look him over, Malcolm had to take care to acknowledge his wound (his old pain-suppression training was taking over, but he couldn't show that trait without raising questions) even as he tried to work out what had just happened; who was the Hood's new partner, and why had he left like that?  
  
More importantly, how had the Hood learnt enough about the Undertaking to know about the _two_ Markov Devices? Even Moira and the others didn't know that detail, and he'd been careful to keep all such information on the second device _extremely_ secret…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to cut this one short, but considering everything Barry's going to learn from his attack, I thought that the upcoming revelations would merit their own chapter.


	8. The True Nature of Time

The moment Barry recognised the voice that had just spoken, his first thought was the terror of how exactly this man could be here. The notion that the Reverse Flash was capable of time travel was terrifying enough on its own, but considering how rarely he'd encountered the man so far he'd held out hope that his enemy's ability to actually use it was limited for some reason.

The fact that his enemy knew enough to find him _here_ , when he hadn't done anything to make his presence in this time public, raised more than a few terrifying questions, but right now all Barry could focus on was keeping up with his enemy. Oliver might have managed to defeat him when he'd been provoked by Bivolo's powers, but back then Oliver had already trained with him a couple of times and had probably spent a few months working on incorporating anti-metahuman techniques into his training just in case. The Oliver of right now hadn't faced anything more serious than the Dark Archer (or whatever Malcolm Merlyn actually called himself), and if he couldn't beat that guy yet he'd at least have serious trouble with the one enemy Barry hadn't managed to defeat yet himself.

With those thoughts having raced across his mind in less time than it would take to read, Barry had already moved to attack the man in yellow before Oliver could react to the voice himself. Whether it was just a lucky shot or he had genuinely taken the other man by surprise, Barry forced his opponent out of the garage and into the road outside the Merlyn Mansion, but soon found himself chasing his foe into Starling City before he had time to come up with a more refined plan of attack.

His experience racing through the city when dealing with Digger Harkness's bombs at least gave him a basic idea of Starling City's layout, but he surprised himself when he found himself running through an area that he didn't immediately recognise. He soon realised that this must be the portion of the Glades that would be destroyed by the Markov Device in a few months, but the moment he spent slowing down to take that into account was enough for his opponent to catch up with him. As the Reverse-Flash launched a punch at his head, Barry surprised himself when he managed to parry and follow up with a blow of his own; the last couple of times he'd fought this man, Barry had always felt as though _he_ was the one moving at a slower speed-

A kick to his chest forced him back and gave the man in yellow time to run down another street, leaving Barry to take a moment to get his breath back before he charged down the street after his enemy. He managed to put on an extra burst of speed when they passed an open area Barry recognised as Nelson Plaza, but couldn't entirely believe it when he managed to catch up with the man in yellow; either his enemy was baiting him for some reason, or the other speedster was _genuinely_ slower now.

As the chase moved down another street, Barry saw a trio of men advancing on a young woman, their entire posture making it clear that they had malevolent intentions in mind, and diverted from his race after the man in yellow to knock the attackers down with a quick punch to the back of their heads before he picked up the race again. His still-unnamed foe was keeping up a good pace up ahead, but the longer this race went on the more certain he became that the Reverse Flash was just a bit slower than he had been when they'd fought around Christmas in the future. The more Barry pushed himself, the more he realised that he was gradually gaining on his opponent, just as the man in yellow seemed to grow ever-so-slightly slower with each passing step…

With each step forward, he found it harder to recall exactly where he was in Star City, but he never lost track of his final goal; he was going to catch up to the man in yellow, and he was going to get some answers about what his enemy was doing here, two years before his own debut as the Flash.

_Actually, I should probably ask why he's so much slower now than he was when we fought at… was it Christmas?_

Pushing those faltering thoughts aside, Barry redoubled his efforts to keep up with his enemy, until a desperate push gave him just enough of an edge to strike the yellow-clad speedster in the back and force his enemy into a tall building that Barry quickly realised from the dank smell and lack of personal items had been abandoned some time ago. The other man regained his balance in time to see Barry standing in front of the door and race up a flight of stairs, likely intending to find another way out, but Barry managed to keep up the pace and catch up with his foe just in time to knock his enemy off his feet before the other speedster could make for a window or start to head down again. Before the man in yellow could get back up, Barry stamped down hard on the man's ankle, coming to a halt when he heard his enemy let out a call of pain that made it clear he wouldn't be walking again any time soon.

"Got you," he said as he returned to more normal speed, panting from the exertion as he glared at his enemy.

" _Impressive_ ," the man in yellow said, his face and voice still vibrating as he looked up at Barry. " _Especially considering your youth_."

"…What?" Barry looked at the man, unable to hide his surprise that his age could have anything to do with what was going on right now. "What do you mean?"

" _You didn't know my name, which means you aren't the Flash I thought you were_ …" the man in yellow said, the other speedster's arrogant grin still visible despite the vibration that hid his face from clear view. " _When are you from_?"

That simple statement threw Barry more than anything he'd expected to hear.

"When?" he repeated, looking at his foe with a new sense of cautious curiosity. " _When_ am I from?"

" _I thought you were the you that I was familiar with, but you're obviously a lot younger than him_ ," the man in yellow explained, his tone surprisingly solemn as he got to his feet, the damage to his ankle clearly already healing. " _You know enough about your powers that you clearly didn't just get them some way I don't know about, but_ …"

"Let me guess; older me has some tricks I haven't used against you yet?" Barry said with a bitter edge, grateful that he had already discussed the idea of his future self fighting this guy with Cisco and Joe so that the concept wasn't a total surprise to him. "That's why you attacked me when I was a kid and… and…"

" _And what_?" the Reverse-Flash asked, actually sounding curious as he looked at Barry with what he could have almost interpreted as genuine concern if it wasn't for the fact that this was the man who had killed his mother-

"Was… was I there?" Barry looked at the man in yellow with a new sense of uncertainty; it felt as though the thought was slipping from his mind the more he tried to hold on to it. "I mean, I know _I_ was there in my past, but… was an _older_ me there as well? Was I… he… trying to stop you?"

" _You don't remember_?" the Reverse-Flash sounded surprised at the question. " _Even when you know enough to ask that question_?"

"I… I _think_ I knew… and now… it's like it vanished…" Barry said, not sure why he was being so open with his enemy even as he spoke. "I'm thinking of my past… and then it's missing…"

" _Time travel_ ," the Reverse-Flash observed, his tone becoming mocking once more. " _You quantum-phased into yourself during an unplanned temporal jump, didn't you_?"

"Quantum phased… is that why I basically possessed myself?" Barry had no idea why he was saying this much to someone he knew he hated, but at the same time the other speedster was the only one who might be able to understand the questions Barry still had about this screwed-up situation.

" _Precisely_ ," the man in yellow nodded with a sick sense of approval. " _You jumped so precisely through time that you essentially phased into your past self's body when you entered this time period… and I can even explain your fading memory_."

"Really?" Barry said, reminding himself not to completely trust anything this man had to say. "How does that work?"

" _Your actions here are overwriting the future that you came from and everything you experienced in it_ ," Barry's nemesis explained, a slightly mocking edge to his explanation. " _The more you use your speed, the more you exhaust the energy reserve that you brought from your future into the present_ … _along with the protection it grants your remaining memories._ "

"So… every time I use my powers back here, the faster I lose my speed and my memories?"

" _Precisely_ ," the man in yellow said.

"OK…" Barry said, hating to concede that he was relying on a known enemy for information even as everything he was hearing made sense. "And… what does this mean for my future?"

" _That is where things become… interesting_ ," the Reverse Flash said, an edge to his voice that reminded Barry of a man holding back the urge to laugh. " _So long as you do nothing to affect the circumstances that gave you your speed, you can theoretically make other changes to history if you wish without it affecting your memories, but once you exhaust your speed reserves and your changes become permanent, essentially the source of your memories becomes a temporal remnant_."

"A what?"

" _Think of it as a 'clone' of yourself created through time travel, such as travelling back through time a few seconds so that the younger version of yourself can now do something different_ ," the man in yellow explained, that same twisted sense of amusement in his voice. " _It's an interesting temporal paradox, but so long as the paradox-created version of yourself dies, it will be a… minimal problem for the timeline to overcome_."

"So you're saying… I'm a clone of myself who'd have to die to stabilise reality?"

" _More that you are_ possessed _by a clone of yourself that will eventually cease, but that's one way to view it_."

"Right…" Barry said, taking a moment to think back over what his enemy had told him earlier to make sure he understood it. "You mean… since I merged with myself and I'm forgetting everything… there's no need for _me_ to die?"

" _Once your memory is lost, your life will unfold as though you were living it for the first time_ ," the man in yellow said, before he stood up and flexed his shoulders with no sign of discomfort in his stance. " _Which means that I no longer need to be here_."

"What-?" Barry began before the man in yellow charged towards him, hitting Barry with such force that he found himself on the other side of a broken window before he had time to properly realise what had just happened. Mind flashing back to the trick he'd used to stop Kyle Nimbus, Barry turned around mid-air and began to rapidly spin his arms as he fell towards the ground, generating two small tornados that slowed his fall. As soon as he was close enough to the ground, he cut off the tornados and hit the ground, moving briskly around to make sure he hadn't damaged anything around the street before he ran around the area as quickly as he could.

Unfortunately, it only took him a few moments to confirm that the man in the yellow suit had vanished while he was busy saving himself, and Barry came to an abrupt halt when he realised that he couldn't remember the name of Joe's partner and Iris's new boyfriend in the future.

 _Great_ … he slammed his hand against the nearest wall in frustration. _As if trying to stop the Undertaking wasn't enough pressure, now I've got to deal with an unknown time limit before I basically 'run out of juice'_.

The idea of him being some kind of time-travel-created clone of himself was a disturbing one, but everything the man in yellow had told him basically lined up with what he'd been theorising about this situation so far. He already knew that the other man was a time traveller even if he didn't get how or why his enemy had come after him in the first place, and everything he'd been told made the kind of complicated sense that struck Barry as someone being honest even if it was confusing. He might work in the lab rather than in the field, but he was still sometimes called on to at least observe interrogations, and from what he'd seen, people lying under pressure tried to keep it simple; if the man in yellow was willing to give him that much detail, Barry was inclined to believe that he was being told the truth.

His mind made up in that regard, Barry took a moment to think over his immediate situation, but it didn't take long to decide what he was going to do next. If he was some kind of 'time-travel clone', everything he remembered of his actual life would eventually play out the way it should so long as he didn't do anything drastic like try to stop the particle accelerator explosion, and that wasn't exactly a practical concern when he couldn't exactly give anyone any _evidence_ of what he'd be trying to tell them about.

If he only had a little time to help Oliver and Diggle before he would lose his memories and powers, he was going to make full use of that time by offering some aid to the people he _could_ help…

* * *

"Well," Thawne mused as he returned his suit to its storage cupboard in his secret room in STAR Labs, "that was… productive enough."  
  
He appreciated that he didn't know exactly what the Flash was doing in this time period, but he had enough discreet security systems set up that he should be alerted if Barry's presence here did anything that might attract a time wraith or similar temporal anomaly. So far anything Barry had done in the past could have only made a gradual impression on the timeline, but he didn't want to risk looking into it in depth with his speed in such a fragile state.  
  
On the bright side, at least that talk had explained why the dregs of Speed Force energy that he had absorbed from Barry's apartment were so fragmentary. Considering that Barry Allen was basically a temporal remnant who'd merged with himself and was making an active effort to undo his exact timeline of origin, the time-traveller was already basically running on fumes, so any excess energy Thawne could get from him would have come from a limited source anyway.  
  
 _All I have to do is stay away and let him run down the dregs on his own. He's stupidly heroic, but he's not_ stupid _, he knows that he can't do anything to stop himself getting his powers, and if he's with Green Arrow, at least Queen won't let him come to any serious harm_.  
  
Thawne would concede that he didn't entirely like the idea of leaving Barry to make his own mistakes in this situation, but he couldn't risk exposing his true agenda when the particle accelerator was still a year away from completion. He had faith that Barry had enough of an understanding of temporal mechanics that he wouldn't do anything that would stop him becoming the Flash in case he got caught in a temporal loop paradox, and he clearly didn't know who was under the yellow mask from whatever point in the current timeline he had come from.  
  
In other words, all Thawne had to do was have faith that Barry's allies wouldn't let him get killed and that Barry wouldn't try to stop the planned particle accelerator explosion, and he could focus on tracking the future via Gideon to make sure nothing went wrong until Barry came back to Central City.  
  
Maybe it was a risk, but Thawne had to admit that he was intrigued to see how things were going to play out, considering what the news reports stated was destined to take place in Starling City in a few months…


End file.
